November 15, 2006

Study: TV advertisers should target baby boomers

By GLENN GARVIN

TV advertisers are crazy to ignore middle-aged viewers, who are just as likely to try new products as their younger counterparts and have a lot more money to spend, a new study released Tuesday said.

Labeling them ''the new power demo,'' the study said Americans between the ages of 40 and 60 have ``the most money of any media audience, and they are spending it today across more product categories and services than any other age group.''

The study, sponsored by the baby-boomer-oriented TV Land cable channel, runs contrary to the conventional wisdom of advertisers and marketers, who pay premium prices for ads on television shows that attract viewers in the 18-to-49 age group on the theory they're more willing to try new products or brands.

But the study, based on a survey of more than 4,000 people conducted by the Harris Interactive polling company, said middle-aged Americans are just as curious.

And they're far richer, the poll shows, with $2.3 billion in discretionary income, 50 percent more than the 18-to-39 age group.

Advertisers and marketers are ''knuckleheads'' who are stuck in the past, said Ken Dychtwarld, president of Age Wave, a consultancy that specializes in the economic impact of baby boomers and oversaw the study.

''The baby boom has created this incredible swell in the middle years of life,'' Dychtwarld said. 'It used to be that people reached 40 or 50, wandered into mid-life crisis, and it was the end . . . But that has all been changed by the baby boomers' eagerness to remain youthful and reinvent themselves again and again and again.''